Duchesneau calls for more witnesses

William Marsden, The Gazette06.27.2012

Jacques Duchesneau’s bold testimony before the Charbonneau Commission has made him a lightning rod for condemnations and confessions. His testimony has prompted others to step forward with accusations of government corruption.

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MONTREAL – No sooner had Jacques Duchesneau finished his testimony before the Charbonneau Commission Thursday than the emails poured in.

At last count, there were 278.

The common denominator? Explosive denunciations of government corruption from people “all over the province.”

Duchesneau’s bold testimony has made him a lightning rod for condemnations and confessions. It has caused a storm. By contrast, when he was head of Quebec’s anti-collusion unit, his tip line got little more than an invitation to a golf tournament. Now, the floodgates have opened.

There’s the person who confessed that “I myself delivered a brown envelope” to a city official on behalf of a city contractor. “(The city) had not installed sewers on a street where the contractor had built houses, and two days after the envelope arrived they were installed.”

Then there’s the official who notes that one government official demanded $1 million before handing out a contract, or the politician who is building a country home and pays some workers in cash.

Duchesneau skips through his email list, reading out one after the other. It’s but a tiny taste of this province-wide confession. He makes me swear not to reveal names or places. He says he has forwarded them all to the commission.

“People don’t know each other, but why is it that they all come up with the same type of stories?” he asked when questioned about whether he believes the flood of emails. “Some people have put a lot of effort into them. Some of the emails are long, full of details and names, so yes I do.”

But at this stage, credibility is not the point, he adds. Charbonneau Commission investigators will hopefully check them out, and if they are credible the senders will be called to testify.

Which leads to a discussion of his own credibility as a witness.

Duchesneau’s decision to write an independent report on political party financing, on his own time and after being dismissed from the anti-collusion unit, led to attacks on his credibility by lawyers representing the Parti Québécois and the government. They claim Duchesneau had gone beyond his mandate and had become a man on a mission to discredit Quebec’s two major political parties.

They criticize his testimony that 70 per cent of political financing is illegal.

“This figure did not come from me,” Duchesneau tells me. “It came from three witnesses who initially approached me.” These included a “big guy” fundraiser, who originally confessed to a priest, who was so alarmed he suggested the fundraiser contact a former judge, who then contacted Duchesneau.

“The angle that the PQ’s attorney took is completely out of whack,” he says. “She claimed that I was the head of UAC (anti-collusion unit) when I decided to do my own investigation, which is a complete lie. I had left UAC four months before. And then people came to me and one thing led to the other.”

He says the “big guy” will testify at the commission in the fall.

Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay also questioned Duchesneau’s credibility. Tremblay is disputing Duchesneau’s testimony that when the two men met in July 2009 to discuss corruption at city hall, Duchesneau suggested he be careful about certain people on his staff.

Tremblay issued a statement in which he “denied categorically” Duchesneau’s “allegations.”

But the former Montreal police chief and mayoral candidate isn’t backing down.

“Would you buy a used bicycle from this guy?” Duchesneau asks about Tremblay. “I wouldn’t. He can say whatever he wants and I know what I said and he knows what I said. He says he doesn’t remember anything but he remembers that we didn’t talk about it. He can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. You call him a mayor?”

I suggest to Duchesneau that with the new crop of potential witnesses raining emails on his computer, the fall session of the commission could become uncomfortable to a lot of people. He laughs.

“We’ll see what happens,” he says. “People have to come forward. That’s the only way to do it. Otherwise, (the commission) makes no sense. The commission is only as good as the witnesses.”

The commission had asked that witnesses not talk to the media. Duchesneau has ignored this request.

He says it’s because he wanted to clear up “grey areas” in his testimony.

For Duchesneau, the denunciatory emails are his swan song, the final act in his Greek tragedy about the corrosive forces undermining the foundations of Quebec’s social, commercial and political structures.

He has had enough and he’s leaving town for a destination he will reveal to no one, a place that will provide him and his family with peace and quiet, not to mention safety.

Safety has been an issue all along, he says.

“It’s time for me to vanish for security purposes. The family has been hit kind of hard. They are scared.”

Where are you going?

“That’s a secret. Away. I cannot push my luck. (Threats) are part of the game. I knew it.”

Do you think it’s that serious a situation that you should fear for your life?

“You know, I will not talk officially about it. Yes, there are problems. I think I pushed a lot last week.”

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